Brexit Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

Why Political Pamphlets Still Matter

A literary look at Brexit shows us how words have always changed the world

October 12, 2022 • by Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier

The texts distributed by Brexit campaigners were intended to agitate, to provoke, and to generate a negative reaction towards the EU that would swing the vote in their favor. ...

Europe & Central Asia

A Year of Boris Johnson

Only a handful of people would be mad enough to covet being prime minister at this particular point in British history, and one of them now inhabits Downing Street

July 27, 2020 • by Simon Jones

Thursday saw the United Kingdom pass an important milestone: one year of life under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. What was supposed to be a fascinating year of unpredictable political events has been rendered utterly dystopian through the COVID-19 crisis. Still, it’s worth looking back on what ...

Politics

The Corbyn Mirage

With little leadership experience, Labour’s leader consistently failed to deliver

February 12, 2020 • by Simon Jones

Labour’s election campaign was an evisceration, handing the Tories an 80 seat majority in the House of Commons and, with no opposition ever having overcome such a deficit in a single electoral cycle, a presumptive decade in power. The party’s heartlands in the North of England were smashed by the Conservatives and ...

Politics

The Prime Minister Versus History

How Boris Johnson misrepresented the United Kingdom’s past to present himself as its political heir

November 25, 2019 • by Alistair Somerville

This is an updated version of an article published at Public Seminar on July 30, 2019. Politicians like to tell stories about themselves. Leaders like to tell stories about their country. The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is the first since Winston Churchill with both a prominent personal story and his ...

Politics

The New Prime Minister Versus History

How Boris Johnson misrepresented the United Kingdom’s past to present himself as its political heir

July 30, 2019 • by Alistair Somerville

What do Johnson’s methods of storytelling and the content of his tales tell us about the man and the prospects for his premiership? To many on this side of the Atlantic, he is simply an enigmatic buffoon — little more than a jumped up Trump mini-me with a plummier accent. ...

Democracy

Why I Believe in Communicative Action: A Response to Geuss

Discursive democracy is a culture and a praxis rather than a matter of theory

July 8, 2019 • by Laura Nelson

Raymond Geuss begins his insightful yet occasionally misleading essay, “A Republic of Discussion,” with the following three questions, each an entry point into his critical account of Jürgen Habermas’s treatment of deliberative discourse in his Theory of Communicative Action and elsewhere. Here’s my gloss on them: “Is ‘discussion’ really so wonderful?” Occasionally yes, equally occasionally no. ...

Feature

Brexit, Dark Money and Big Data

An investigation into the financing of Brexit

February 3, 2019 • by Adam Ramsay

An investigation by openDemocracy into the financing of the Brexit campaign in 2016 has raised far-reaching questions about connections between neoliberal elites, the tech industry and the private intelligence sector. Adam Ramsay, one of the journalists involved, summarizes a story vital to understanding how Britain has ended up where it ...

Feature

Be Here Now

A review of 1997: The Future that Never Happened

January 23, 2018 • by Alex Niven

My abiding memory of 1997 is of a music video that emerged towards the end of the year. Officially a charity single for Children in Need, but actually an encomium for the BBC and its license fee, the all-star cover of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ released in late November was ...

Multi Media

Theresa May, Goop, and Father’s Day

Past Present: Episode 88

June 22, 2017 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Neil J. Young and Nicole Hemmer

In this week's episode, Niki, Neil and Natalia debate the outcome of the recent British election, Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop, and the history of Father's Day.

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Uncategorized

How A Conservative Rural Country Defeated A Far-Right Presidential Candidate

The 2016 Austrian Presidential Election

January 18, 2017 • by David Kretz

On the same day, Austrians also voted in the final round of their presidential election. There, center-left candidate Alexander Van der Bellen (Green Party) defeated far-right candidate Norbert Hofer (Austrian Freedom Party, FPÖ) 53.8% to 46.2%. Austria is a small country, but the outcome of this election has international significance ...

Feature

The End of Progressive Neoliberalism

A chance to build a new, new left.

January 6, 2017 • by Nancy Fraser

The election of Donald Trump represents one of a series of dramatic political uprisings that together signal a collapse of neoliberal hegemony. These uprisings include the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the rejection of the Renzi reforms in Italy, the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party nomination in ...

Feature

The Illiberal International

September 14, 2016 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

Stalin, in the first decade of Soviet power, backed the idea of “socialism in one country,” meaning that, until conditions ripened, socialism was for the USSR alone. When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared, in July 2014, his intention to build an “illiberal democracy,” it was widely assumed that he ...